from the my-hero dept

As we are quite likely in some kind of golden age for pure snark, a golden age probably in part super-charged by these here internets, it would be nice if the general public likewise had a firm grasp on the protections afforded to us by free speech rights to partake in parody and mockery. Sadly, too often the targets of such parody would rather try to silence speech than address what might be legitimate concerns. But it's when government does so that any forgiveness for this should end, as government should be particularly aware both about the free speech rights in place regarding parody and of the consequences of trying to silence criticism in any sort of ham-fisted manner.

Which brings us to the city government of Atlanta, Georgia, which appears to be trying to apply trademark law to harass a comedian whose "City of Atlanta" parody page uses a city logo, with predictably laughable results. This episode started when Ben Palmer, a local comedian, became frustrated at the machinations of city government and started a parody Facebook page, adorning it with one of the city's official seals.

Palmer started the fake City of Atlanta Facebook page when he became frustrated with numerous parking tickets, run-ins with city officials, and a lack of funds. The page uses an official city seal Palmer admits he copied from the city's Parks and Recs page. The city of Atlanta was not amused by the copyright infringement.

"The First Amendment allows people to express their opinions concerning their government in many ways, including satire. However, no person has the right to use a trademark in a manner that deceives or confuses the public," a city spokesperson said in a statement to 11Alive.

Except, of course, that's not actually true. First, there's no real deception to be taken into account here; the page is clearly parody. It is far more clear in its purpose, in fact, than many other sites on the internet, some of which can fool even Presidential campaigns. And, in the employment of this sort of parody, a satirist is allowed to use otherwise protected intellectual property. Given the entire point of the First Amendment, this must be particularly the case in the scenario of a citizen's right to criticize his or her government.

But because the city's target here is a comedian, Palmer modified the logo in a hilarious way in an effort to appease the government.

I'm sure everyone's happy now, right? But, in an effort to further thumb his nose at the Atlanta government, Palmer agreed to remove the logo entirely upon the meeting of certain demands he has outlined.

I read the news that the city of Atlanta would like me to discontinue using their logo. I will remove the logo from the page and discontinue posting as "City of Atlanta" in exchange for the following:

All of my parking and traffic tickets are absolved

$60 cash

2 free rides on the trolley

This is my final offer. Thank you.

Seems reasonable. Not as reasonable as, say, a government simply letting free speech run its course and potentially paying attention to the criticism within parody to address citizen concerns. But that appears to be asking way too much.

from the well-that's-interesting dept

Lyft just announced an interesting partnership with MARTA, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority to basically help get more people to and from MARTA stations. It's an interesting approach to try to help make public transit more convenient:

Partnering with transit agencies like MARTA is a core part of our vision to build a sustainable transportation network. By helping fill the first and last miles between a passenger’s home and a MARTA station, we’re making it easier than ever to ride transit. We believe that when transit is within reach of everyone, our cities are more liveable, connected, and prosperous.

Of course, it's not entirely clear what's really involved in the "partnership" beyond marketing. Yes, Lyft is offering discount vouchers, but only for 10 rides. And you could already use Lyft or Uber to do this without the partnership.

Where this potentially gets more interesting is the decision of Dublin, California, to look to Lyft and Uber as a substitute for public transportation by subsidizing rides via those companies instead of taking a bus.

In a first for California, a public transit agency next month plans to begin subsidizing fares of people who take private Uber and Lyft cars to local destinations rather than riding the bus.

Passengers ordering Uber or Lyft car trips within two test areas of Dublin will be eligible to get door-to-destination service at a big discount under a partnership between the ride-hailing companies and the Wheels public bus system in Dublin, Alameda and Pleasanton.

The local transit authority is even suggesting that this might change the way they set up routes and serve certain communities. In fact, they've already killed off one (little used) bus route, suggesting that this new partnership can help replace that route more efficiently.

I can see why this might annoy some people -- and certainly those who don't trust big private companies like Uber and Lyft are going to complain. Similarly the bus driver's union rep is apparently pissed off. But this is still a really interesting experiment. If it allows municipalities to truly offer better, more efficient transportation and it's cheaper overall, then is it really a problem that some companies might also make some profits from it? It will be interesting to see how this experiment in Dublin works out and if other cities follow suit. And it seems like a much better idea than what's happening in Massachusetts, where the government has instituted a special tax on Lyft and Uber... and giving that money to the taxi companies who didn't innovate.

from the almost-but-not-quite-competing dept

With Google Fiber now starting to encroach on some major Comcast territories, the company's suddenly finding itself in the unfamiliar position of actually having to compete on price. In Atlanta, where Google Fiber is expected to appear later this year or early next, Comcast has been circulating flyers urging locals not to fall for the "hype" of ultra-fast, relatively cheap Google Fiber service.

But given that Atlanta is one of Comcast's growing usage cap "trial" markets, many were wondering just how far Comcast was willing to go in terms of competing on price. With the company's announcement this week that it's beginning to deploy gigabit cable service (technically 1 Gbps downstream, 35 Mbps upstream) in Atlanta, Comcast's strategy has become somewhat more clear. According to the company, Comcast will offer its gigabit service for $70 a month if you sign a contract, but $140 a month if you choose to go without.

"That's Comcast's attempt at price competition, given that Atlanta is one of the markets Google Fiber has targeted for deployment. Comcast tells me that while the $70 option will not feature the company's usage caps (which are being "trialed" in the Atlanta market) users on the no-contract, $140 plan will face usage caps. They also have the option of paying $35 per month extra to avoid said caps."

In other words, if you lock yourself down in a three-year contract to avoid usage caps, you'll obviously not be able to sign up for Google Fiber without a major penalty when the service arrives. If a customer chooses to go without a contract to leave their options open -- they'll face either a 300 GB cap and $10 per 50 GB overage fees, or the option of paying a $35 per month fee to avoid the usage caps entirely. So yes, Comcast's "competing," but in only the way Comcast can.

Much like its usage cap plans, Comcast states these early gigabit cable deployments (Nashville, Chicago, Detroit and Miami on deck) are just trials, and the company's pricing could shift depending on whether this latest long-term contract gambit is effective at keeping potential Google Fiber customers from jumping ship.

Degban's "State of Piracy" page introduces itself with some rather ominous wording about piracy and the importance (and difficulty) of compiling accurate numbers.

When it comes to statistical data regarding content piracy, the complexity of the data and its abundance is utterly mind boggling. The data channels are scattered across geographical borders and scientific dimensions. The nature of the matter effects the data gathering process, resulting in datasets with chaotic orders and unclean results sets.

It is of grave importance, regardless of the challenge, to understand the trends and fashions behind content piracy as a thriving organism . Furthermore, appreciation of statical [sic] data regarding content piracy can be advantageous from a business intelligence point of view.

And some very fine "statical" data it is. The first chart posted is of the pie variety, breaking down the "market share" of several file storage lockers. Most of the contenders hover somewhere between 4-6% of the "market," possibly giving some credence to the MPAA's claims that Megaupload made the Internet go 'round by driving 99% of the traffic that wasn't Netflix (heavily paraphrased).

The data Degban has collected also shows the US firmly holding the lead in terms of "Origins of Pirate Peers." (USA! USA! USA!) How this number (185,290) is derived remains a mystery, but whatever it is, it's nearly nine times as much as Russia (28,001). So... who's doing all this piracy? Atlantans, apparently.

As can be seen by this chart, Atlanta is more than twice as piratey as Tacoma (?!?), the second place pirate haven, in terms of numbers lying along a Y-axis. Again, no further information is provided as to what these numbers represent, but we can certainly assume that Atlanta is the problem and Tacoma isn't helping. Once we venture beyond these two homegrown pirate bays, we see pirating is a major issue in such metropolises as Chalfont, PA and Iselin, NJ. Other cities/villages/unincorporated townships appear on the list as well, leading to questions of "Where is that, exactly?" and "Didn't that one guy used to live there... the serial killer/general store proprietor?" Cities with large populations -- New York and LA -- are pretty far down the list, which might make a lesser anti-piracy company question the quality of its data.

Degban really drives home the "Atlantans heart pirating" point with its next info-less graphic.

From this graphic portrayal of the United States battling a post-adolescent breakout of Venn diagram remnants, we can only draw one conclusion: if piracy is to be stopped, Atlanta has got to go. No more DMCA requests. No more lousy legislation. No more half-assed, self-serving infographics. You kill something by cutting off its head. The MPAA will be able to return millions of bag boys to their copyright-protected jobs just as soon as someone detaches Atlanta from the internet. And, from what I can tell of the map above, at that point, nearly all piracy will have gone away. If only Degban had made this clear earlier, we could have done away with all these lawsuits and focused in on the real piracy cancer: Atlanta.

Now, the numbers contributing to these SHOCKING bar graphs might possibly be found in this detailed, interactive (click over to Degban's site to experience this in all its glory) Google Map, which pinpoints where these "peers" are located, as well as the number of peers operating at each inverted teardrop.

Yes. There are some numbers in there, alright. Some low numbers. In fact, it's tough to find any location with more than 5 "peers." How these scattered points add up to over 10,000 pirating Atlantans is beyond me, especially considering Atlanta itself has no data point at all. None. Zip. Zero. Clearly, Degban processes data in a far advanced way, in which "0" peers means, "more than double the piracy impact of Tacoma, in which Tacoma is the number two piracy center."

You may also want to check out the dates on this map. It looks like the last data harvest was back in the spring of 2010. "OLD NEWS!!!" I hear you yell like a bunch of irate Digg members Redditors. But, how can that be? "Data is important," Degban tells us in the intro, along with this:

This section is regularly and automatically kept up to date.

From the looks of it, "regularly" means "once per decade." And "automatically" means "please delete this word from this sentence before publishing this page."

So, we have a bunch of numbers that don't add up, aren't current and do little more than randomly drop circles on maps and rub bars affectionately up against sky-high Y-axises. And yet, Degban is a well-known name in the piracy world, one that understands the "grave importance" of accurate and up-to-date statistics. To fight your enemy successfully, you must know them, and from what I'm seeing here, Degban is nearly 100% sure someone's pirating stuff somewhere.

Godspeed, number wranglers! Remind me to keep one hand on my content when passing through the muggy climes of Hotlanta or the suicidal murkiness of upstate Washington! And tell Vkontakte.ru that everyone's extremely disappointed in its lack of effort on the file sharing front.